Food & Diet Myths

Hungry Girl is a fun email subscription. However, most of the emails I barely skim, if that. However, one recent email caught my eye. Here are Hungry Girl’s Diet Rumors:

Myth: Carbs make you fat.Truth: Carbs are not the culprit for your weight gain, excess calories are.

Myth: Large water intake yields instant weight loss.Truth: Not likely unless you’re replacing calorie-dense beverages such as sodas, juices, and alcohol with water.

Myth: Adopting a vegetarian diet will help shed unwanted pounds.Truth: Wrong! Vegetarians can eat too much, too. There’s some research that says going vegetarian can actually stimulate weight gain as the carbohydrate-protein-fat proportions become skewed too heavily in the directions of carbohydrate.

Myth: Cutting out dairy can help you lose weight.Truth: No way, Jose! Put down that copy Skinny Bitch. Low-fat dairy provides an excellent source of low-calorie protein as well as calcium and vitamin D, among other essential vitamins and minerals.

And in other news…coffee & glucose metabolism

Coffee has been touted as a beverage which can decrease risk of type 2 diabetes. Good thing, I am insulin resistant and love coffee! Right? Maybe…

According to recent research recognized by the American Diabetes Association, caffeinated coffee may impairs glucose metabolism. The study discussed below assesses the acute effect of decaffeinated coffee on glucose and insulin levels. This study design was a randomized, cross-over, placebo-controlled trial of the effects of decaffeinated coffee, caffeinated coffee, and caffeine on glucose, insulin, and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) levels by means of a 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test in 11 men [source].

The study found that some types of decaffeinated coffee may impair glucose metabolism, but less than caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee acutely impaired glucose metabolism in healthy young men as both glucose and insulin were significantly higher after decaffeinated coffee than after placebo. However, decaffeinated coffee did not impair glucose metabolism as severely as caffeinated.

Hm, okay.

I’ll have my coffee with carb-free bacon and eggs.

Kidding…

Mr. Prevention and I are heading to Columbus, Ohio this evening and staying through Sunday. I’m not quite sure what the schedule brings, but I will have laptop in tow.

I love that she points out the “carbs make you fat” myth. I have a really hard time not getting into lengthy debates about it when my friends on a diet discuss the evilness of carbs… Sometimes it’s just easier to let it go…

I definitely think no-carb diets are ridiculous. However, cutting out dairy for a lot of people will certainly help them lose weight. The majority of people who eat dairy tend to also eat a ton of fatty cheeses, and simply skimping on dairy can help easily shed calories. As for adopting a vegetarian diet, you have to be smart about it. Sure you can eat pizza everyday and be a vegetarian, but then you’d be better of as a meat-eater!! Some vegetarians also end up the other way with eating disorders. So going vegetarian, one needs to do their research and do it for the right reasons. I’m headed over to check out the website, thanks for the overview!

Interesting myths! I love Hungry Girl too, although I also generally skim the e-mails.

The whole “going vegetarian makes you lose weight” thing– SO not true! I haven’t lost a pound since going veg– which is fine, because I didn’t go veg to lose weight, but if someone was doing it for that, I think they might be disappointed!

I don’t drink coffee (except for the occasional lattes at Starbucks, but those I think of as more “dessert” drinks!), mostly because I just don’t like hot drinks! Well, I drink tea sometimes, but I let it cool off for AWHILE. I kind of wish I did like coffee, though. That way I could get off of the diet sodas!

I saw this Yahoo! article yesterday talking about how water was this “magical elixir” to help you lose weight. But like you said, that’s only if you go from drinking a lot of high-calorie stuff to only drinking water. I don’t even drink JUICE (sometimes, very rarely). Studies have shown that drinking very cold ice water does result in a VERY small caloric depletion because your body uses energy to warm up the water, but it’s not nearly enough to cause any weight loss.

Coffee is nasty to me. I’m almost positive I hate it because when my sister started middle school (and I started 4th grade), my mom had to get up earlier to drive her, so for some reason it became my chore to wake up even earlier, as in 5 AM, and make her coffee. Apparently I’m great at it. 😐
But it’s not that I just like really sweet or creamy coffee or anything like that, because I even hate coffee/mocha-flavored desserts. I hear there’s some health benefits and some not-so-great effects to drinking it but it doesn’t worry me since I avoid it all anyway. 😛

Just so you don’t get too confused, this is Melinda from nutrition, food, travel and more, but I have a new wordpress for a side project I am putting together and I am therefore logged in to that account and I know my name is coming up different today.

Very interesting about the coffee! I drink coffee about 3 times a week, usually as a special treat. I probably shouldn’t admit this (but I trust you 😉 ), but I take my coffee with skim milk and Splenda. (Horrible, I know!) I’m working on switching it to honey…and trust me, honey with coffee is really an acquired taste. 😉

I think it’s good that you just skim the Hungry Girl emails most of the time. I know the girl has become something of a sensation but her reliance on artificial sweeteners and low fat foods is kind of disturbing to me. I think anyone making a habit of eating the foods she tends to recommend would be consuming a lot of foreign fabricated ingredients.

Anyway, don’t mean to rant. Even though the diet myths unveiled list is interesting enough, I just found Hungry Girl to be a bit of square peg round hole addition to Prevention RD.

I drink coffee almost every morning, and get cranky if I don’t. I’m actually drinking one right now, and it has cured my headache! See! Miracle! haha!

I…have a bit of a loathing towards Hungry Girl. I just hate the way she categorizes every good as “fattening” and “non-fattening”. There is more to food than calories, and more to life than fitting into a size 4!

I go through love spurts with coffee… I’ll love it for a while and drink it every morning and sometimes in the afternoon. Then I’ll wake up one morning and be over it (like now). I haven’t had a cup in a few weeks and have no desire too. Weird, huh??

I feel the same way about Hungry Girl. I read the daily newsletter to find out what “day” it is (ex. National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day)!
I drink coffee if I feel like it. It’s not an instant need in the morning. Sometimes I drink it black (after a workout) and sometimes I get a Skinny Hazelnut Latte – depending on my mood!

Just wanted to say that I love this post and love those myths! So glad you shared Tried to leave ya a comment the other day, and couldn’t so I came back to try again 🙂 And success! PS no idea Byetta came from that lizard! Learn something new everyday!